Matthew Tully: A hard life comes to a violent end on the Southside

Jun. 28, 2013

Brent Walls hugs his father Charles after being released from Wabash Valley Correctional Facility in 2010. Brent, a former Manual High School student, was arrested at school and was found carrying a loaded handgun. Danese Kenon/The Star

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Charles Walls reacts to seeing his son, Brent Walls, being released from Wabash Valley Correctional Facility in November 2010. Charles Walls was shot to death at a Southside apartment complex this week. Danese Kenon/The Star

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Charles Walls was a fountain. Everything, it seemed, poured uncontrollably out of him — his emotions and his tears, his dreams, his confessions and, most of all, a brutal honesty about himself.

He was the first to tell you that he was a deeply flawed man, a man whose past mistakes haunted him, a man whose story should serve as a lesson to those younger than him.

In our many conversations he told me of the drugs that had poisoned years of his life, his long-ago problems with the law, and his regret about not having been a better father earlier. I got to know Charles, his son, Brent, and other family members a few years ago as I worked on The Manual Project for The Star.

Charles Walls lived for years on a rough block on the Near Southside and struggled financially; yet as much as he talked about his struggles he never complained about them. I remember him tossing a standard adage my way that underscored his philosophy: “If you make your bed you have to sleep in it.” He did just that.

And despite everything else, I remember his fundamental optimism, his belief that better days would find him and that his family’s tremendous hardships, many of them self-inflicted, would ease.

Walls died this week, another in a long line of recent homicides in the city.

I learned of his death the old-fashioned way, by reading his name in a story about the recent rash of homicides in Indianapolis. Charles Walls, 58, was shot to death in a Southside apartment complex, a line in the story said. It stopped me cold. I didn’t want to believe it was the Charles I knew, the one who had talked to me so often about life and told me about his dream to move out of the city and into the country, to get away from all of his neighborhood’s dangers, to get him and his family away from all of their problems.

I dialed Walls’ phone number after reading the story, thinking that perhaps there was another Charles Walls in the city. But the phone just rang and rang, and a few minutes later, after a colleague emailed me a photo of the homicide victim, any doubts I had were erased. There he was — with his gray mustache, intense eyes and spiky, thinning hair. A troubled life had ended suddenly and violently. Even in that initial moment I felt more sadness than surprise.

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Walls was one of those guys a journalist like me is fortunate to meet. With his raspy voice and gentle demeanor, he selflessly offered up a window into a world that those of us who write about the city’s problems need to better understand. He talked about the grip crack has on a person and the difficulty of overcoming a 1970s felony conviction. He walked me in detail through what his son had experienced in the juvenile justice system, and he blamed himself above all else for Brent’s problems.

“He didn’t have a father for the first 10 years of his life,” the former truck driver once told me.

The conversations with Walls were always interesting, no matter how tough the topic. And while I’ll never claim to be capable of peering into men’s souls, he seemed without question to be a sincere man, emotional and, if it’s possible, almost too courteous. He was 15 years my senior, for instance, but declined my requests that he call me Matt instead of his standard “Mr. Tully.”

Over a span of about two years, Walls and I had long conversations over coffee, at Wendy’s and on the phone, and he welcomed me into his house several times to talk about whatever was going on in his life.

Helping me tell his son’s story, he provided me with letters, medical documents and court papers. On a cold November day in 2010 he even let me ride home with him and Brent when his son was let out of state prison. Only 18, Brent had spent a year there after pleading guilty to a felony gun crime.

It was that crime that first led Charles Walls and I to cross paths. Those first moments were intense and personal. Brent had been arrested for dealing drugs and bringing a loaded handgun to Manual High School and, as I sat in the dean’s office that 2009 morning, Charles arrived holding onto the hope that he could somehow erase his son’s latest mistake. But he realized quickly that was a fantasy and he broke into tears, sobbing deeply and loudly, pulling off his knit cap and using it to wipe away the tears on his reddened face.

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“Oh my God, my boy’s in trouble,” he said over and over and over.

The primal cries of a 55-year-old man were sad and touching, as were the other words he offered several times to the school’s principal: “I’m sorry, Mr. Grismore,” he said, still crying. “I’m so sorry.”

In the months that followed, Walls told me his story. He talked about his troubled past and the deep Christian faith he had come to in midlife. He was a frequent presence at a neighborhood church and had started his own landscaping company, hiring his sons and naming it Chuck & Sons Christian Hauling and Lawncare. After Brent left prison, his father insisted he work with him, hoping long days of strenuous labor and a fatherly presence would keep him out of trouble.

Every time I visited Walls’ house it was filled with family members, and their conversation usually turned at some point to the Colts or a big dinner they were planning; Charles was the family cook.

Despite all of their problems, and even despite their fights, they were an intensely tight-knit group. They openly professed their love for each other, and I saw that love in the concern the elder Walls shared when Brent was in trouble, and when Brent told me in prison one day how scared he was that something would happen to his dad. Charles called me many times, but I can’t think of one call that was not initiated by his concern about something going on in Brent’s life.

I lost touch with the family roughly two years ago and didn’t know until reading the paper that Charles had finally made that move to the country.

I have no idea what happened Monday night. Nobody seems to know why Walls took a detour into a Southside apartment complex on his way to pick up Brent; as I write this, police have offered few specifics. Regardless, it’s unlikely that the details of what happened — whatever those details are — will change my view of Charles Walls.

He lived a flawed life. He’d tell you that without hesitation. He was often haunted by his past. He didn’t deny making more than his share of mistakes. But at his core, Charles was a dreamer and an optimist who wanted to do better. It was impossible not to root for him.